Thanksgiving Nostalgia

When I realized that my post this month would fall on Thanksgiving, I had two thoughts. First, that everyone might be too busy cooking and eating to read it and, second, that Thanksgiving has nothing to do with the Regency stories I love to write. While there were harvest festivals and such, there were no Thanksgiving celebrations as we Americans (and Canadians) know them. I mention this because I like to share Regency information in my posts.

I have often wished I could include a Thanksgiving celebration in one of my books. Not only is that is my favorite holiday, but I can easily imagine Darcy being forced, for Lizzy’s sake, to spend every Thanksgiving either at Longbourn or with the Bennets at Pemberley. Can’t you imagine him suffering through Mrs. Bennet’s effusions over the roast pheasant every year? However, since I’m very reluctant to change continents or write a modern story, that will probably never happen.

Still, I was bound and determined to include my favorite picture of Thanksgiving in this post, so I started there. The painting below, Freedom From Want, is by America’s beloved painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell, and it best exemplifies what I remember of Thanksgivings spent at my grandparents’ farm in Cullman County, Alabama, as a child.

Freedom From Want

And, once I found this painting I realized what this post needed to be about. Norman Rockwell included this picture in a series of oil paintings in 1943 he called the FOUR FREEDOMS.

These are among his best-known works and at one time, were commonly displayed in post offices, schools, clubs, railroad stations and a variety of public buildings.

Freedom of Worship

Freedom of Speech

Freedom From Fear

These paintings—Freedom of Worship, Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Fear and Freedom from Want—illustrate President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s January 1941 State of the Union address in which he identified essential human rights which should be universally protected. In my opinion, they represent America as our forefathers designed it—one nation, under God, indivisible. Our Declaration of Independence, which pre-dates and pre-exists the Constitution, states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

I thank God every day that I was born in the “land of the free,” and I try to pray for those who were not as fortunate. At this Thanksgiving, let those of us who value freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of speech and freedom to worship, make our voices heard.

My wish for you and your family is that your day is filled with love, laughter and thanksgiving for your blessings. To help bring you laughter, I am posting another of my favorite Rockwell Thanksgiving paintings, “Cousin Reginald Catches the Thanksgiving Turkey.”